How many Atheist are also vote Republican from time to time?

[Cephus]

The reality is, in the early 70s during Nixon's Southern Strategy, a huge number of Southern hyper-religious Democrats, upset with their party over issues like abortion and civil rights, jumped over to the Republicans and, over the past 40 years, have largely taken over the party.  They are still, in virtually every way, Democrats, except for their hyper-religiosity.  The operation of the GOP today is more liberal than conservative.  They spend like a drunken sailor (not fiscally conservative), they never met a program to enlarge the government that they didn't like (not small government), they desperately want to control what the public thinks and does (not keeping the government out of the lives of the people) and they think they know better what people ought to want (not for personal responsibility).  None of those things are conservative, in fact, those are the opposite of conservatism.  What they are, though, are liberal traits.  It's amazing what 40 years of a group acting liberal and calling it conservative will have on the American people.  It's no wonder they have no clue what conservatism actually is.

Thanks for the info. Conservatism entails conserving something, usually some principles, tradition, economic policies, etc - It is also linked with prudence and caution and skepticism of arbitrary change. Being a conservative depends on what country you live in. In Britain conservatism is tied with things like royalty and monarchy, in France with French tradition and French values and the French revolution (naturally).

True, but the one thing that conservatism has nothing to do with is religion, but that's the one thing that everyone seems to think characterizes American conservatism. They're just wrong.